About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Friday, July 31, 2015

Doug Deason has an op-ed on p. A23 of the Thursday July 30
New York Times, “Ruining lives with criminal ‘justice’”, link here.

Deason is now a Dallas businessman (Wiki link)
but his narrative indicates that he almost got a felony on his record for
throwing a party at a neighbor’s house while they were away when he was 17 (the
topic of a few comedy movies to be sure).
It was plead down to a misdemeanor and expunged.

Deason notes that many major companies, including Walmart,
Home Depot, and Koch Industries have eliminated most criminal record questions
from their applications.

I believe that most companies that I applied to during my “career”
did ask. For Bradford (for New York
State MMIS in 1977) we had to pass a fingerprint check, and for USLICO in 1990,
we had a drug test, which was soon eliminated. But the concern over criminal backgrounds increases with cybersecurity and consumer privacy needs.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Pundits are recommending immediate installation of Windows
10 to replace Windows 8, tomorrow July 29.
“It’s free”. But it would sound
as if Microsoft and companies like Geek Squad could be overwhelmed if everyone
does it at once.

Digital Friends has a flash video giving 5 reasons to
upgrade, here, including a return to a more user-friendly
start menu for computer users (the tablet stuff got in the way), a speech
feature Cortana, and the ability to fragment the desktop into tiles, like in
the movies.

Computerworld has a more complete list here, which include hooks for biometric login and more flexible updating.

One question would be, how long does the download and
install and numerous restarts take? Will
hidden hardware problems show up (as happened last year with a Toshiba
Satellite going from 8.0 to 8.1, when the mother board burned up, on a computer
still under contract support – thought to be a hidden manufacturing problem).

Will Geek Squad do this on its contract plans? I have been told that computers under
warranty should have this done right away to uncover any hidden hardware
problems. There is a “risk” that any
upgrade can expose hardware weaknesses than the previous system tolerated.

Something else I've noticed in W8: when in Windows Explorer, if you want to remame a file, be very careful that the cursor is over rename and not delete, right above it. Even if you type in a new name, if the cursor is too high, it deletes the item.

Saturday, July 18, 2015

The Wall Street Journal has a story by Steven Rosenbush
where the writer interviews Google CIO Ben Fried, on how Google handles IT
tools it provides for its workers, link here.

In fact, Google often lets its engineers choose their own
tools, because part of the job is often to develop the entire concept of how
future users will use a product or app.

It also notes that, in customer support, initial responders
are able to close about 90% of problems on their own.

The implication is that sometimes employers use their own
hardware.

It’s apparent that this could introduce security problems,
but in the past I usually used my own computers when supporting systems from
home (partly because I wanted “clean money” and to avoid “conflict of interest”
with my own book business).

And it’s interesting that a few years ago, some companies
were hiring customer service workers to work from home on their own desktop
computers. But given today’s concerns
about consumer information security, it would sound as though most companies
would have to provide a separate work-only laptop for their associates to use
at home. That gets interesting when employees travel, but it seems (from the literature)
that it usually isn’t a problem to take two laptops (work and personal) through
the TSA (although would they have to be in one bag?) Here’s a forum link on that question. It might be stricter with overseas flights.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

I bought a new travel computer before my jaunt to
Orlando. It was a Lenovo Yoga 2
Tablet-hybrid “Ultrabook” with Windows 8.1

The keyboard-touchpad is separate, runs on Bluetooth and
needs to be within about seven feet of the tablet. The keyboard can be
connected the first time by keying in “Bluetooth” on the tablet and clicking
for the appropriate unit. The keyboard has separate power and takes about three
hours to power up.

The main tablet unit powers up very slowly, and seems to
take about eight hours to even go from 80% to 100%.

Lenovo recommends keeping the battery in the 60% range. Charging should not be attempted if it is
over 90%. There is overcharging
protection.

The unit worked pretty well the first three nights, but
Sunday night I ran into problems with the Bluetooth dropping. When typing in
Word, the last character would stick.

On one occasion, the unit seemed to fail, as I had trouble
turning it off. Finally I did so (you
have to hold the power button for eight seconds). Generally, a full Restart
would stabilize the Bluetooth for a while.

I had bought the unit from Best Buy in Falls Church VA. Monday night, I drove to a Best Buy on E
Colonial Drive in Orlando (just east of Semoran) and a Geek Squad
representative was quite helpful. He unchecked a power management option that
will disable Bluetooth automatically sometimes to save power. He also adjusted some other settings.

But it seems that the main cause of the instability of the
Bluetooth may have been the environment in the hotel. Some nearby older Bluetooth devices can
confuse the polling unit on the tablet unit.
Geek Squad says his can be a problem with some Windows based tablet
ultrabooks. A firmware fix from Lenovo
might be needed to fix this. The unit
was more stable in the store, airport boarding area or at home than in the
hotel.

The tech in Orlando recommended that owners of Windows 8 or 8.1 computers still in warranty (or with Geek Squad contracts) upgrade to Windows 10 as soon as available on July 29. The reason is that W10 is said to be simpler and should be more stable.

He also confirmed my experience that Apple tends to be more reliable than most Microsoft-based PC's because Apple can manage its own manufacturing. Microsoft has to work with many manufacturers (hence complicating firmware interfaces), although it sometimes forms more closely supervised relationships with some companies (HP and Dell) for some products. Very small hardware problems can build up over time and cause sudden failures, like when a computer is stressed by major updates.

I was not asked to turn on any electronics at either Reagan
airport in Washington or in Orlando. I don't see how an airport security staff could get this done for every traveler. In fact, in Orlando, we were asked to put
all loose electronic items (including the cell phone) in one carry-on bag. The laptop or ultrabook should be left in a "TSA-friendly" bag.

Friday, July 10, 2015

So, the NYSE trading floor outage on Wednesday was due to a “botched
move” – colloquial for “elevation” or “promotion”.

News stories have compared modern Internet systems uptime
reliability to Ma Bell’s in the monopolist past – with the enormous manpower it
took to keep reliability.

United Airlines's problems were due to a bad router. WSJ's were unexplained.

I remember how we used to brace for “moves” – with a
Wednesday noon deadline for freezing changes, with most elevations only on
Fridays for weekend cycles. In the early 1990s, most shops adopted
change-control management (like CA-Librarian) that froze various components and
guaranteed move integrity,

It’s also interesting right now how recollections from my
last two years in a customer service workbench support (2000-2001) helps me
solve problems “on the road” today.

Friday, July 03, 2015

A federal appeals court has set aside a lower court ruling against
Fox Searchlight Pictures brought by two former interns, Eric Glatt and
Alexander Footman, and narrowed the standard for when employers may use unpaid
interns. It has thrown out some detailed
Labor Department rules and focuses on whether the intern “benefits” more than
the employer, and whether there is some kind of educational institutional
supervision.

The link in the Business Day section of the New York Times
is here. This seems like "pay your dues" on steroids!

Many agencies still test for marijuana use, and evidence of
use can stay in the body for 30 days.
Second hand exposure is unlikely to cause a positive test, but it might
be conceivable. Other tests, like hair samples, might show use for longer. The
CIA asks if you have been drug free for one year, the FBI, three years. The State Department has no waiting period,
but sometimes tests randomly.

Apparently medical use would not be recognized as legitimate
by some agencies, since federal law still views even medical use as illegal,
although it is becoming acceptable in many cases and obviously helps many
patients.

I had only one drug screening in my career, at end of 1989
when I applied for the job at USLICO that would start a 12-year hitch winding
up with ING.

It would seem reasonable that drug abstinence periods should be based on what can actually affect doing a job. Alcohol is legal, but pilots may not use it for 24 hours before flying. Marijuana policies should be similar.

Complicating the issue is that home recreational use of
marijuana is now legal in the District of Columbia, and possession of up to six
plant is permitted. In some areas, it is
possible for marijuana to grow wild on a property and not be noticed by the
owner.

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